Pentagon: Chemical exposure in Iraq

More than 600 U.S. service members since 2003 have reported to military medical staff members that they believe they were exposed to chemical warfare agents in Iraq.

However, the Pentagon failed to recognize the scope of the reported cases or offer adequate tracking and treatment to those who may have been injured, defense officials say.

The Pentagon's disclosure abruptly changed the scale and potential costs of U.S. encounters with abandoned chemical weapons during the occupation of Iraq, episodes the military had for more than a decade kept from view.

This previously untold chapter of the occupation became public after an investigation by the New York Times revealed last month that while troops did not find an active weapons of mass destruction program, they did encounter degraded chemical weapons from the 1980s that had been hidden in caches or used in makeshift bombs.

The Times initially disclosed 17 cases of U.S. service members who were injured by sarin or sulfur mustard agent. And since the report was published last month, more service members have come forward, pushing the number who were exposed to chemical agents to more than 25.

But an internal review of Pentagon records ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has uncovered that hundreds of troops said they believe they were exposed, officials said.

The new and larger tally of potential cases suggests there were more encounters with chemical weapons than the United States has acknowledged and that other people — including foreign soldiers, private contractors and Iraqi troops and civilians — may also have been at risk.

The Pentagon says it now will expand outreach to veterans. One first step includes a toll-free national phone hotline for service members and veterans to report potential exposures and seek medical evaluation or care.

Phillip Carter, who leads veterans' programs at the Center for a New American Security, called the Pentagon's failure to organize and follow up on the information “a stunning oversight.” Paul Reickhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the military must restore trust by sharing information.

“We need total transparency and absolute candor,” Reickhoff said, and noted the military's poor record in releasing information about its use in Vietnam of Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant linked to an array of health problems, and in sharing data about troops' presumed chemical exposures and other medical and environmental risks during and soon after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Military officers said the previously unacknowledged data were discovered when, at Hagel's prodding, the Army's Public Health Command examined its collection of standardized medical-history surveys, known as post-deployment health assessments, which troops filled out as they completed combat tours.

The assessments included the following question: “Do you think you were exposed to any chemical, biological and radiological warfare agents during this deployment?” For those who answered yes, the forms provided a block for a brief narrative explanation.

Col. Jerome Buller, a spokesman for the Army surgeon general, said Thursday that the review showed that 629 people answered yes to that question and also filled in the block with information indicating chemical agent exposure.

Each person who answered the questionnaire would have received a medical consultation at the end of their combat tour, Buller said.

Why the military did not take further steps — including compiling the data as it accumulated over more than a decade, tracking veterans with related medical complaints, or circulating warnings about risks to soldiers and to the of Veterans Affairs Department — remained unclear.